No! Hers was
not a rare temperament, except in its fierce resentment of repression; a
feeling which like genius or lunacy is apt to drive people into sudden
irrelevancy. Hers was feminine irrelevancy. A male genius, a male
ruffian, or even a male lunatic, would not have behaved exactly as she
did behave. There is a softness in masculine nature, even the most
brutal, which acts as a check.
While the girl slept those two, the woman of forty, an age in itself
terrible, and that hopeless young "wrong 'un" of twenty-three (also well
connected I believe) had some sort of subdued row in the cleared rooms:
wardrobes open, drawers half pulled out and empty, trunks locked and
strapped, furniture in idle disarray, and not so much as a single scrap
of paper left behind on the tables. The maid, whom the governess and the
pupil shared between them, after finishing with Flora, came to the door
as usual, but was not admitted. She heard the two voices in dispute
before she knocked, and then being sent away retreated at once--the only
person in the house convinced at that time that there was "something up.
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